How does one negotiate salary when no guidelines are listed in the want ad?

Background:  I’ve got another interview this Friday, this time for a Circ Supervisor position at a small liberal-arts college in a semi-rural area about 15 miles from a fairly large city. No salary range was listed in the job ad. Even though the job is a supervisory one (in charge of managing the 15 student assistants at the circ desk), no MLS/MLIS is required and library experience is only “preferred.”

In the interest of preparedness, I am assuming the planets will align and am forging ahead with salary research.  Being the good little aspiring librarian that I am, I tried looking up the job title on salary.com, but found no exact match for the college’s general area.  Is there an art to adding one’s experience to the job description and coming up with a magical salary number, or should I just ask for $5k more than what I’m making now (as my boyfriend suggests!)?

In any case, it hardly seems fair to not publicize salary requirements–or even a range!–in the want ad.  All the power rests with the hiring institution!  Which, I’m sure, is entirely the point in this situation.

So I’ve got an interview for a part-time (15-25 hour/week) “library associate” position next week. Even assuming I get the job, it’s a 45% pay decrease from what I’m currently making–and I’m not making all that much. I’ll be able to keep my current job even with the reduced hours.

So my question is (again assuming I get the job): is it worth taking the position to get the experience even with the drastic cut in pay? I would ask for the least amount of hours so I could earn as much as possible. It’s not like I would be unable to pay my bills, although with this being the post-Christmas season my credit card would really prefer me not to take a pay cut.

What do you think?

It’s late and I can’t remember the listserv I read this on (NEWLIB? REFLIB?  NEXGENLIB?) , but in any case it has been mentioned somewhere that job applicants with public library experience are at a disadvantage when applying for academic library positions.

Now I wonder:  does this mean the person who hopes to work in an academic library (me!) shouldn’t apply for public library positions in the meantime to gain experience?  Is public library experience really worse than no experience at all?  Why is working in a public library considered a disadvantage in the first place?  Am I missing something?

Please tell me what you think!